Barbie® doll, the ultimate muse, embodies three major works of art — with a fashion twist — courtesy of visionary designer Linda Kyaw for The Barbie® Museum Collection!

“For the Museum Collection, I wanted to do something different,” Linda explains, “so we went with the most iconic paintings of all time with an emphasis on fashion.” For the collection, she picked works by Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, and Gustav Klimt.

Excited by the prospect of reinterpreting their paintings, Linda faced several interesting challenges. “Everyone knows the Mona Lisa from the waist up,” she explains, “so I used the color palette of the painting’s background to conceptualize the rest of her dress.” The result is a stunning green, brown and gold-hued renaissance gown with rich brocade shoulders. Linda adds, “Barbie’s face paint was applied by talented painter Ei Fong, who perfectly captured the famous Mona Lisa smile!”

In another remarkable design, Barbie® literally wears Van Gogh’s masterpiece Starry Night. When translating the painting to fashion, Linda found the challenge was “to make it trendy, to fuse the original painting with an edgy fashion dynamic.” The final ensemble, re-imagined as a romantic, full-skirted dress, perfectly reflects the swirling night sky overlooking Saint-Remy, exactly the way Van Gogh painted it!

Gustav Klimt’s glorious-in-gold masterwork Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is equally arresting in Linda’s hands. “Klimt is one of my favorite artists,” she says, “and for this piece, I picked the stunning Aphrodite face sculpt because it bears a striking resemblance to Adele.” Linda also notes that all dolls are posable for a variety of different looks.

The collection has already garnered so much praise, in light of its timeless and classic appeal. But you don’t have to go to a museum to see them - these dolls are just a click away in the online shop!